Coals to Newcastle and missed boats

Taking or carrying coals to Newcastle is an idiomatic expression that means doing something that is completely unnnecessary, pointless or superfluous. The German equivalent of this is Eulen nach Athen bringen/tragen – to take/bring owls to Athens. Are there similar expressions in other languages?

Newcastle-upon-Tyne used to be a major coal mining area and the UK’s first coal exporting port, and was first associated with pointless activities in Thomas Fuller’s 1661 The history of the worthies of England: in which he wrote, “To carry Coals to Newcastle, that is to do what was done before; or to busy one’s self in a needless imployment.”

An idiomatic way of saying that you’ve missed something such as an opportunity or an event, is ‘I’ve missed the boat’ or ‘that ship has sailed’. In German, the equivalent is der Zug ist abgefahren – the train has departed. A similar expression is used in Swedish – tåget har gått – the train has left. What about in other languages?

For “bringing coals to Newcastle,” the classical Hebrew equivalent (Talmud, Menachot 85a) is “bringing straw to Ofarayim” (a place known for its grain production). I don’t know if that idiom is still used in modern Hebrew.

I would consider “water naar de zee dragen” (= to carry water to the sea) to be the Dutch equivalent for the coals expression.
There is even a lovely song by Boudewijn de Groot which features this called “Waterdrager”. (You can hear a sampling of the song here)

My tuppence on this subject:
In Brasil we say “chover no molhado” – “to rain on the wet place” – for a superfluous activity. Our “to miss the boat” is “perder o bonde”, literally “to miss the tram”.
Incidentally, the word “bonde” we use over here seems to derive from the English “bond”, because these vehicles came to be called for the bonds (stocks, shares) of The São Paulo Tramway, Light &#38; Power Company, the Canadian corporation that was powerful (pun intended) around the turn of the century (19th -&gt; 20th).
In Portugal “bondes” are called “eléctricos”. The etymology is obvious. ;-)

There was a corporate training film produced in the US called “The Abileen Paradox”. It concerned people who, as a group, talked themselves into going to Abilene, Texas (USA) to eat dinner when none of them wanted to do so individually. Thus, in some corporate circles, “on the road to Abilene” has come to mean doing something pointless in spite of common sense.

Though this is not exactly analogous, another English example is “gilding the lilly.” It bears similarity insofar as redundancy is concerned, but differs I think in its more specailized connotation of taking an already delicate thing or matter and applying an additional layer of delicacy.